The 2018 Auto Bild SUV / 4x4 winter tyre test has used an Audi Q5 to test ten 235/60 R18 winter tyres, with the Goodyear UltraGrip Performance Gen-1 SUV proving to be the best tyre on test thanks to a balanced all-round performance.

Surprisingly Pirelli edged out Continental to second place, with a brilliant result for the Pirelli Scorpion Winter. This tyre has been on the market a number of years now, and historically hasn't tested as well as Goodyear or Continental, so there must have been and update for the 2018 winter season. The Continental Winter Contact TS850P SUV rounded out the top three, with its only real weakness appearing during the dry braking tests.

The other notable result was the new Achilles W101X. Budget tyres like this Achilles historically perform excellently in snow testing, but end up with dangerously long wet and dry braking distances, but in this test the Achilles held its own, finishing second during dry braking and beating the established names of Toyo and Firestone during wet braking. Impressive when you consider a set is nearly half the price of the most expensive tyre on test...

Dry

The Pirelli winter tyre proved to be the master of dry testing, but still lagged significantly behind the reference summer tyre again highlighting the dry penalty siped winter tyres bring.

Wet

The summer tyres advantage continued in the wet, albeit the gap was smaller. The top three tyres overall were all stars of the wet testing, showing how important wet performance is to winter tyre testing.

Snow

Unsurprisingly the summer tyre was at a huge disadvantage in the snow testing. Continental proved to have the best snow braking, where Nokian was the fastest around the snow handling lap.

Environment

The Pirelli bended an excellent dry and wet performance with the lowest rolling resistance on test, an impressive feat!

Unusually the summer tyre was the quietest on test.

The budget Achilles was by far the cheapest set of tyres on test, with the Michelin the most expensive. Sadly Auto Bild didn't include any wear testing, so we can't judge which tyre is best value overall.